1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and a customized printing system with employment of such an image processing apparatus, capable of performing image processing operations in response to printing orders from customers so as to form prints desired by these customers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most of the images recorded on photographic films such as negative films and reversal films (which are hereinafter referred to as “films”) are conventionally printed onto light-sensitive materials (photographic paper) by a technique generally called “direct exposure” (analog exposure) in which an image on a film is projected onto the light-sensitive material for areal exposure.
A printer that adopts digital exposure has recently been commercialized. In this “digital photoprinter”, an image recorded on a film is read photoelectronically and converted into digital signals, which axe subjected to various kinds of image processing to produce recording image data; a light-sensitive material is exposed by scanning with recording light modulated in accordance with the image data, thereby recording a (latent) image to produce a (finished) print therefrom.
The digital photoprinter can convert an image into digital image data and determine exposure conditions at the time of printing the image by image data processing. Hence, the digital photoprinter is capable of performing effective image processing operations such as the correction of washed-out highlights or flat shadows due to the taking of pictures with back light or an electronic flash, sharpening and the correction of color or density failure and this enables the production of high-quality prints that have been impossible to attain by the conventional direct exposure technique. Moreover, since composition and division of a plurality of images, composition of characters or the like can be performed by the image data processing, a print that is freely edited and/or processed depending on an application can be outputted.
It is preferable that an image is not only outputted as a print from the digital photoprinter mentioned above but also the image reproduced on the print is suitably adapted to a customer (person who requests printing). To this end, the applicant of the present invention has already proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei-11-331570 an image processing method and an image processing apparatus in which finishing suitably adapted to customers is carried out by image processing to thereby output prints having higher commercial values.
This document discloses that the image processing operations to be performed and the image processing conditions are set in accordance with the acquired customer information such as occupations, sexes or ages of customers.
To be more specific, in a case in which a film is a reversal film and the customer information acquired for the occupation is a professional photographer, image processing conditions are set so as to reproduce an image photographed on the film faithfully. In a case in which the customer information is acquired that the customer is a person who works in construction fields, look-up tables (LUTs) are set to apply dodging strongly so that an image having no washed-out highlights or flat shadows can be obtained. Further, in a case of a male, the image processing conditions are set so that a face region is extracted and sharpness of this region is given rather strongly to make gradation prominent and show details. In a case of a female, the image processing conditions are set as follows: A face region is extracted and sharpness is given rather weakly or soft focusing is applied extremely weakly to make gradation less prominent and to make live spots, wrinkles, freckles or the like less outstanding.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei 11-331570 as mentioned above discloses that the apparatus automatically sets the image processing conditions from the customer information such as occupations, sexes and ages of customers to perform finishing processes considered to be suitably adapted to the customers. As mentioned above however, the image processing conditions do not depend on the customized orders given from the customers, but are set by the apparatus based on the appearance (formal) information of the customers. As a result, there was such a problem that requests from the customers could not be always correctly reflected on the thus set image processing conditions.